Frances O'Connor

So, is this the end of the line for our lovely cashmere-clad mafiosas? Wednesday's episode of Cashmere Mafia was the final one completed before the writers' strike began, and there's been nary a word from ABC about bringing the show back into production. I guess that's no surprise considering its ratings have been somewhere around the Cavemen level, but it would be a bit of a bummer to go out with last night's episode, which clearly wasn't meant to be the ending of anything at all. Could they end on a note of affair, scandal, financial ruin? Nah — just a couple of professional crises and a random dog. Be sure to check out Fab's fashion quiz, and to read my take on what could be the final Mafia, just read more

Leave it to Cashmere Mafia to usher in Valentine's Day with a hearty helping of heartbreak. It's not like every relationship ended in tatters, but the episode wasn't a great advertisement for swooning, head-over-heels love, either. Unless, of course, we're talking about the love you share with your best girlfriends while devouring a box of chocolates. I'll go character-by-character after the jump, so just read more

"Stay With Me" seems like a particularly apt title for this episode of Cashmere Mafia. With only two episodes to go before the end of this little mini-season, I'm willing to ride it out — but I'm also not sure I would be heartbroken if I never saw it again once these episodes are done.

That said, there are a few things that have kept me going week to week: Juliet's frosty kiss-off of Davis, Caitlin's goofy sexual confusion, and Mia's bizarre styling choices among them. Luckily, all three of those things factored heavily into this week's episode. I'll go character-by-character after the jump, so read more

OK, Cashmere Mafia, you got me. This week's fourth episode was pretty fun to watch — mostly thanks to Caitlin, who gets all the best lines. Mia, not so much; the show is supposedly built around Lucy Liu's character, but I find her stories dull. Juliet and Zoe got some good stuff last night, though, so that helped fill the giant void that Mia has become for me. Read on for my thoughts:

• I continue to be amazed/impressed/intrigued by Caitlin's blase attitude about discovering she might be gay. I'm not sure how believable it is, but I did get a kick out of her proclamation that her lesbian relationship has lasted "twice as long as the last five guys and 29 days longer than Tae Bo, cognitive therapy, and carb-busters."
• Zoe and Juliet are the only characters who seem to be getting equal screen time on both their home and their work stories. That's a good and a bad thing: I like Zoe's work stories much more than her home stories, and I feel exactly the opposite about Juliet. Her suspicion of Davis is much more interesting to me than her failure to properly send a group e-mail.
• Speaking of which, these women don't particularly strike me as tech-savvy. Still, I do like a good automated phone system joke. "I think you said Lake Placid." "Screw you." "I think you said . . . "

Now, for more on what actually happened (spoilers included), just read more

Since we're sadly lacking Gossip Girl for our Wednesday night scandal fix, I'm going to try recapping Cashmere Mafia for a while. Yeah, I know it's been a little disappointing so far, but hey, it's a scripted series that's still airing new episodes! Plus, there are only four episodes left after this one, so it's a pretty low commitment. Anyone with me? Let's get to it:

• So Mia is in publishing, Juliet works in hotels, Caitlin does cosmetics marketing, and Zoe does . . . what, exactly? No, seriously, what's her job? I'm three episodes in, and I know her work involves something about "points" and making sure her scantily clad coworker doesn't sue her boss, but other than that, I'm stumped.
• Also, so much of this show seems like a placeholder they meant to go back and punch up later but didn't have time to fix. Naming a magazine for modern men Modern Man is a lot like naming a fashion magazine Fashion Magazine. As for "Do you know what they call a cosmetics executive with bad skin? Don't make me finish that sentence," I bet they just couldn't come up with a funny way to finish the sentence.

More plot development and slightly less whining if you read more

Cashmere Mafia is back tonight for its proper premiere — apparently ABC would prefer to call the episode that aired on Sunday a sneak preview. But is anyone going to be watching? I didn't expect the highly anticipated series to be struggling in the ratings already, but the news after Sunday's episode wasn't good. The show drew about 10.7 million viewers, which might not be so bad if A) it hadn't lost almost half of the audience that tuned in for Desperate Housewives right before it, and B) 2 million people hadn't switched the show off at the halfway point.

Though lots of you weren't really digging the show on first watch, most of you were either instantly hooked or charitably willing to give the show a second chance. Having seen tonight's second episode, I will say I liked it better than the first — though it still didn't come close to my high expectations. I'm not ready to tune out Cashmere just yet, but I am a little bit afraid for its future — after all, if it couldn't do well with a huge episode of Desperate Housewives as its lead-in, how will it perform when its only support comes from Wife Swap and Supernanny?

Are you still game? You can watch a scene from tonight's episode if you read more

With several new series set to premiere this Winter, I'm resurrecting my occasional pilot watch feature to share my first impressions of the upcoming shows. First up is the highly anticipated ABC series Cashmere Mafia, which premieres this Sunday, Jan. 6, before moving to its regular Wednesday time slot.

What's it about? Four business-school friends turned powerful New Yorkers conquer the boardroom and the bedroom.

Who's in it? Lucy Liu, Miranda Otto, Bonnie Somerville, Frances O'Connor

The good: The show has its roots in Sex and The City, with writer Darren Star serving as the show's executive producer, so that's not a bad pedigree for another series about female friendships. The pilot has a few genuinely funny moments, especially from Somerville and Otto, the latter of whom looks and acts like a junior Bree (Van de Kamp) Hodge. The outfits from SaTC costume designer Patricia Field are alternately brilliant and horrible, but at least they're never dull.

The bad: The first episode introduces far too many convenient plot lines to make a coherent story: There's an engagement, then a broken engagement; an affair, its discovery, and revenge; a nanny introduced and quickly dropped; a lesbian plot line that evolves from a quick glance to a kiss in mere minutes. It's so frenetic and covers so much ground that when one character said "I'm late," I half expected the next line to be "I'm due in June; the baby's yours." (The second episode calms that pace down somewhat.) The show is supposed to be about the characters' office lives, but after two episodes, I still didn't know what three of them actually did. And, maybe worst of all, the four main characters don't have the easy chemistry of the SaTC ladies or even the Desperate Housewives.

Will I watch? Well, there's not much else on, so why not? Honestly, though, the second episode was a bit better than the first — though still not great — and so I suppose I'll give it a few more shots. The show only completed seven episodes before the strike started, so it's not a huge commitment.

To check out a preview and a gallery of photos, just read more

At ABC's TCAs Sex and the City creator Darren Star was asked the obvious over and over again. His new show includes Miranda Otto, Frances O'Connor, Bonnie Somerville and Lucy Liu as his new dream foursome in the mid season guilty pleasure, Cashmere Mafia. Yes, the cast has four beautiful women living in NYC but he promises this show is different than that Sex show we all can't stop talking about. He also addressed the movie rumors (sort of) and how this show is a lot like that other one called Lipstick Jungle based on the book by his good friend who also wrote SATC. Here are highlights:

• Difference between CM and SATC:
  "This is a show that examines women from the point of view of women in business and the particular challenges they face as career women. SATC is a comedy about sex.... the shows are looking at women from two different points of view."
• When asked for any teasers about the SATC movie Darren joked:
  "It features four women." He then went on to only say, that there is a script and it's in the form of pre-production so at least that is more evidence that the movie is on its way to being made.

• On NBC's Lipstick Jungle:
  "I'm a dear friend of Candace and I read "Lipstick Jungle" which I think is a terrific book, and at the time we were talking about it, I did not end up producing "Lipstick Jungle" and it sort of went on its merry way for a couple of years. And then this idea came to Kevin and I through Gail and ABC and I thought absolutely. I'm still very energized creatively by this arena. And the idea that there can be two shows about "Saturday Night Live" on one network, to say that there can't be more than one show about working women is ridiculous because there is so much material there."

What else do we have to look forward to? How about the adorable Lucy Liu being dressed by Patricia Field! It's hard to not make the comparisons to SJP but based on how they talked about how the designer works on the set we can expect lots of exciting new outfits. Click here to learn more about the fab Patricia dressing the new hottest four women in prime time.

To see a bunch more pics of all the fabulous women just read more